I wet a cocktail napkin and wiped some of the dark rings from under my eyes, then turned to my hair.
The bathroom door clicked open, and I dropped the pin I was holding.
“Jumpy,” Stellan said, easing the door closed. “Afraid of flying? I should have brought the big plane instead. Less turbulence.”
This was the small plane?
Stellan tightened the knot on a slim black tie and reached over me to flip on an espresso maker. “Coffee?”
I stepped aside and side-eyed the espresso cups he set on the counter. I wanted to get him talking. If he wouldn’t answer any of my questions directly, maybe he’d at least let something useful slip. “I would have taken you for a vodka-in-the-morning kind of guy,” I said, measuring his reaction.
He loaded the machine with coffee grounds. “Why’s that?”
“I want to say because your accent sounds Russian and that’s the stereotype.” I tapped a bobby pin on the sink. “But really, from what I’ve seen so far, it’s just what I would expect from you.”
He filled a small cup and set it in front of me with a quick laugh. “Half Russian,” he said in that light accent. “The other half’s Swedish, so feel free to make insulting Viking references, too. Besides, they don’t have my favorite vodka on this plane.”
He sipped a second cup of espresso and gazed silently out the window at the fingers of pink sunrise stretching across the sky. So much for getting him chatting.
“So you and Jack are what, bodyguards?” I took my place at the sink again, concentrating on the mirror.
He smiled. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like one of those dolls?” he said. “A . . . kuklachka. How do you say it in English? With the white skin and the big eyes.”
“A porcelain doll.” My pale complexion and dark hair would have been enough, but add dark eyes and cheeks that flushed too easily and too often—like I was determined for them not to do right now—and that sealed it. He wasn’t the first to make the comparison. “Why does the family you work for care about me if I’m related to someone else?” I said, steering the conversation back around.
“A pretty little porcelain doll,” he said. “That’s you. Kuklachka.”
I wasn’t sure if he really did want something from me, but if he thought taking his shirt off and acting like we were on some kind of bizarre vacation was going to make me flustered enough to reveal secret information, he was wrong. It was only making me a little flustered.
I shook it off and reminded myself that even if he’d been civil since the prom, something about him still made me uncomfortable, which meant it was deeply messed up to let him flirt with me at all, much less react to it. But if he was trying to get me to let my guard down, I could do the same to him.
I yanked out a few more bobby pins, which clinked as I pitched them into the trash can under the sink. The next pin stuck, shellacked in place with hairspray. I pulled harder, and hissed through my teeth when I yanked out a few strands of hair. It wouldn’t help to take my nerves out on my scalp.
“Here.” Stellan set his espresso cup down on the sink and peered into my mess of hair, his fingers moving mine aside.
I ducked away. That was going a little far. “Absolutely not.”
He moved my hands off my head. “It reflects poorly on me for you to show up looking like you’ve been in a bar brawl.”
I twisted away, and he sighed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Maybe if I knew what you were going to do to me, I wouldn’t be so worried you’d stab me with a bobby pin,” I said under my breath. Honestly, I wasn’t that worried—it did seem like it was his job to deliver me unharmed. I just didn’t want to let him think he was getting in my head.
He ignored me and placed my hands firmly at my sides.
I was too exhausted to protest anymore. And who knew? Maybe it’d be good for me to let him think he was getting in my head. Plus he was right—the stuck pin was making it look like I had a wing on top of my head. He worked it out with a surprisingly gentle touch and pushed my hands away when I tried to take over again.
“What am I going to do to you, you ask? Well, I barely know you,” he said, freeing the last of my curls and softly tousling my hair for any remaining pins. He looked me up and down in the mirror. “But I’m sure I could think of something. I do appreciate your enthusiasm.”
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of rolling my eyes, but my inconveniently active blushing mechanism gave away that the innuendo wasn’t lost on me. He gave a short laugh, and adjusted an earpiece in his right ear.
We broke through a layer of clouds, and a vast city spread out below. I pushed by Stellan and stared out the window.
If this was real, I was about to meet my family. People who had known my father. For the first time in my life, people who wanted to know me. But I couldn’t help thinking about Stellan’s scars, and the tattoos, and about what kind of people would practically kidnap a girl from her prom to bring her to France, and my heart skipped painfully.
“Please take your seats,” the pilot’s voice said from the speakers in the cabin. “We’ll be on the ground in twelve minutes. Bienvenue à Paris.”
CHAPTER 9
Paris looked like a movie of Paris.
Most places don’t. All of New York isn’t Times Square, and you can’t see the Hollywood sign from the beach in L.A. The only place I’d ever been that could have played its movie self was the Las Vegas Strip, which we drove through on our move from Texas to Oregon.
But Paris wasn’t just the white dome of the Sacré-Coeur on a hillside in the distance, or the Eiffel Tower—the Eiffel Tower!—growing larger every second. It was the details.
The entire city seemed to have been color coordinated long ago, so the gray roofs and cream buildings and wrought-iron balconies all worked in perfect harmony. The bridge we trundled over featured rows of dark streetlamps that looked straight off a movie set, and golden statues at both ends of it kept watch over the Seine. It felt unreal, like a camera crew would show up at any moment and remind me that this wasn’t my life.
The car rolled to a stop.
Stellan climbed out and came around to my side. He stood straight now, hair smoothed, suit jacket buttoned, very official. I couldn’t help but yank on the hem of my dress. I suddenly felt very small and very out of place and very nervous. I rubbed the gold filigree on my locket as the driver opened my door, marveling that there was a driver opening my door. I felt like Dorothy stepping out the door of her little house into Oz.